


Spuffy Ficlets

by the_moonmoth



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Community: sb_fag_ends, F/M, Ficlet Collection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-02
Packaged: 2018-04-29 12:38:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 4,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5127956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_moonmoth/pseuds/the_moonmoth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A selection of Spuffy-ish ficlets in a variety of genres and settings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Trick to Being a Grown Up Is Negotiating With a Vamp

**Author's Note:**

> SB_Fag_Ends is a fic-writing community on LiveJournal in which the challenge is to produce something less than a thousand words for a given prompt. In this year's Halloween Challenge I penned 31 submissions (in 8 days, yikes!) This collection contains all the ficlets too short to merit their own post (longer ones are in the process of being cleaned up and will be posted separately). If something here sparks a desire to see it expanded, please feel free to take it off my hands :) Completely unbeta'd. Feedback is loved like a vampire loves blood ;)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Jeepers, It's the Creeper (fluff)
> 
> Summary: Dawn and Spike negotiate terms.

**The Trick to Being a Grown Up Is Negotiating With a Vamp**

 

Dawn felt herself blush the deep red shame of coollessness. Spike's shit-eating grin, floating like the full moon above his dark ensemble, did not help.  
  
"Jeepers?" he leered. "I admit it's been a while since my human days, but you don't  _smell_ like a five-year-old..."  
  
"Gross," she said, womanfully resisting the urge to sniff herself. Getting scared out of her cute new denim jacket by the thing that regularly went bump in their yard had a tendency to make her break out into awkward sweat. "Besides, rhymes with 'creeper', as in, if Buffy finds you lurking about out here again it's all gonna end in dust."  
  
"Yeah? And how's it going to end for you, little bit? Wager I'm not the only one stepping over their boundaries tonight."  
  
Dawn raised her chin, refusing to be intimidated by a lovesick, toothless vamp with probably-chronic split ends. "Truce?" she said, trying to sound grown up and self-possessed about it. Spike just raised an eyebrow. Dawn rolled her eyes. "You know what that means, right? You don't tell on me, I don't tell on you."  
  
"Yeeeah," Spike drawled, looking unimpressed. "But that's not really a fair deal, is it? Cause I think you care way more about getting caught than I do."  
  
Dawn huffed and crossed her arms, cocking her hip in a way that  _must_  have made her look more adult because it made Spike stare at her strangely and clench his jaw, like he was suddenly seeing her in a new light. "I'll tell you what Buffy said about you yesterday," she suggested, because negotiation was, like, totally the mature thing to do.  
  
For a moment Spike looked like he was going to try to make fun – again – but the glow of her grown-up-ed-ness and self-confidence must have convinced him out of it because he abruptly switched gears and nodded amiably. "Yeah, all right." They looked at each other a moment. "So where we going this time?"  
  
"Meh," Dawn said, loping off down the street, Spike on her heels. "Buffy wouldn't let me have ice cream for dinner, so I'm gonna go steal some from the Star Market."  
  
"She  _is_ an unreasonable bitch, isn't she?"  
  
"Funny, that's almost exactly what she said about you."


	2. The Trick to Being a Grown Up Is Negotiating With a Vamp

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: The demon of the dugout (comedy)
> 
> Summary: Domestic silliness of the teenager-having variety.
> 
> Notes: I had to google was a dugout was. I dunno if they have them on softball courts but go with me here ;)

**Spike's Guide to Successful Parenting**

 

"Daaaaad!"  
  
Buffy heard the sounds of terror very-much-cognita coming her way and braced herself. Sure enough, there was the slam of the front door and the sound of a kit bag being slung violently into the coat stand.  
  
Spike's voice came next – "That's enough from you, platelet." – and he sounded the kind of harried he got when violence was needed but very much unforthcoming.  
  
"Oh my  _god_ ," Joycie whined, "I can't believe you! This is just so... so..." the sound that came out of her then would've made a rhinoceros proud, followed by the pounding of stairs – also of the African Big Game variety – and the heartfelt, tearful yell of, "I'm never going to live this down! My life is  _ruined!_ I  _hate_ you!" The slam of Joycie's bedroom door was the triumphal cherry on the drama-cake.  
  
There was a pause and then Spike came through to the kitchen, looking slightly shell-shocked.  
  
"Hi honey," Buffy said brightly, waving at the Keurig with her mug. "Coffee?"  
  
"What the hell just happened?" Spike asked faintly, slumping down at the table.  
  
Buffy, who had had the whole incident live-texted to her by Xander, leaned back against the counter and sipped her coffee calmly before reminding him, "You beheaded Joycie's softball coach."  
  
"Well, yeah," Spike said, aggrieved. "He was a Zabrilith demon."  
  
"In front of all her friends."  
  
"They do  _eat_ people, you know."  
  
"According to Sophie Harris, he only tried to eat the boys who hit on the team, which I know for a fact is not a stance you disagree with."  
  
"That's different, she's my kid," Spike said, a heap of miserable confusion at the kitchen table. He looked at her, eyes haunted. "One dead demon is not the end of the world!"  
  
Buffy implored the ceiling for patience. Then she looked back at his face and took pity on him. He wasn't used to not being the hero at the center of Joycie's universe. "Honey, she's thirteen. It's always the end of the world."  
  
"She's barely even teenaged. I don't remember Dawn being this much trouble at that age – I thought we had a little more time before that particular tone of petulance entered our lives again."  
  
Buffy swallowed the comment about selective memory, put her coffee down, slid her arms around his shoulders from behind, and kissed his cheek. "Look on the bright side," she said. "We've got thirty minutes of sulk time  _at least_. When else do we get that much guaranteed, uninterrupted privacy?"  
  
Spike leaned back into her, obviously prepared to have his wounds seen to. "Oh yeah? What do you suggest?"  
  
Buffy smiled, letting her hand trail down his chest. "Basement? There's a load of laundry needs to come out in a few minutes, and in the meantime..."  
  
"Multi-tasking," Spike said approvingly, getting to his feet before coming back into her arms. "That's my girl." He gave her a heated kiss, hand on the small of her back pressing their hips together.  
  
"Mmm," Buffy said, groping him shamelessly through his jeans. "Let's take your mind off it." She kissed him hard before drawing back, leading him towards the basement door. "Then maybe you can show me whether that's a softball bat in your pocket or you're just pleased to see me..."


	3. Hollow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: 1, haiku - Mamba Wamba and the Voodoo Hoodoo (angst); 2, prose - Pole to Pole (angst) 
> 
> Summary: Goes AU some time around Once More With Feeling. Buffy discovers what lengths she will go to to rescue Spike.
> 
> Notes: These two fills are related, and so I'm posting them together.

**Hollow**

 

Spike writhes in torment  
Xander whistles quietly  
Impressive hoodoo  
  
Willow's eyes are grave  
Voodoo witch laughs silently  
Buffy knows she's helpless

* * *

When someone who loves you dies, it doesn't matter how you felt about them – you regret not knowing them better. Spike suffered for five weeks before it ended, and I never expected it to affect me as much as it did. Stupid, really. He was in my basement, and spent most of his time there screaming. I hadn't expected it to be pleasant. I just... the look in his eyes when the contortions came over him, the way he would only find sleep when I was there... it hollowed something out in me, something I didn't even know he'd been filling.  
  
Dawn said I was glad that it had happened. Not that he had suffered and died, but for what came after. The mission. The quest that would take me so far from home. She said I was glad of the excuse to leave her again, and all the responsibilities that had weighed on me so heavily since my friends dragged me back from heaven.  
  
She wasn't wrong exactly, but it was more complicated than that.  
  
She never understood that, though perhaps she should have: I had loved her, and died. But she was still only a child. I think I forgot that too often, when it mattered.  
  
Perhaps the weight of his love rested more heavily for not being returned, a depression in the world that drew me down into it, but when I found out a week later that he wasn't really gone, I couldn't just leave it. Leave him. It felt like a door that had slammed shut in a sudden gale, before I was done looking at the view. And I wasn't done. Not with life; not with him. Suddenly, I needed him to know that.  
  
I mean, we'd just found that voodoo doll burned and blackened by the pile of dust on the cot and assumed. Maybe we all even felt a little relieved that it was over. Everyone thought I was crazy – _more_ crazy _–_ but it wasn't like I was going to ignore the first slayer dream of my (god)  _third_ life. It wasn't big on details but I knew this setting out: Spike had loved me, and somehow he was still alive, and if it meant I had to travel pole to pole I was going to get him back.


	4. 'Til the End of the World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Who's minding the monster? (AU - although not so much AU as extreme future fic)
> 
> Summary: They'd always been warned not to go in the basement.

**'Til the End of the World**

 

For as long as Cole could remember, they’d been warned: don’t go down to the basement alone. He'd always figured that it was because it was full of boxes and rickety shelving and old lawn mowers and junk – dangerous stuff a little kid could bring crashing down on his head. But he wasn't a little kid anymore, and besides, Scarlett had dared him.  
  
What they found down there, past the weird shadows their flashlights cast, was a door. Behind the door, there was a staircase. And down the staircase, was... an apartment. That was the only way to describe it. There were rugs on the floor, candles in sconces, posters of – rock stars? – on the walls, and some weird, ancient-looking wooden box with a strange black disc lying inside.  
  
"What the hell is this place?" Scarlett said, and it wasn't louder than a whisper but Cole still couldn't help from shushing her. Quietly as he could, he clicked off his flashlight and drifted over to the wooden box. It had some kind of delicate metal arm reaching over it, with what looked like a blunt needle at the tip. It looked like the needle was designed to touch the disk.  
  
"What do you think it is?" he asked his sister.  
  
"I don't know," she said, and before he could stop her she'd started poking at the row of buttons. The disc started spinning, the needle came down, and music blared out of two enormous black rectangles.  
  
They both screamed, and jumped back, and that was when they realized they weren't alone.  
  
Grandma found them there about ten minutes later, huddling together against a wall while the monster with the bumpy forehead and yellow fangs growled and glowered at them, and cursed them out for... waking him up? And it was such a relief to see her that Cole could've cried.  
  
"Spike," she said, in that commanding tone of hers, "stop scaring the children."  
  
Well that was... surprising. The monster paused and straightened up, and suddenly he wasn't a monster anymore but a man who looked strangely familiar.  
  
"You're no fun anymore, niblet," he said, but he shrugged and sighed and let them go with Grandma back upstairs.  
  
In the kitchen, they all sat down and Grandma put the kettle on for cocoa, and when they'd both finally stopped jittering and got some sugary goodness down them, Grandma turned to Cole and asked, "Do you remember that time you were kidnapped as a child?"  
  
And Cole frowned and said, "Duh, that's not exactly something you forget."  
  
"Do you remember that you told us they were monsters?"  
  
"Yeah but he was only like five or something. Still a baby," Scarlett said dismissively, and then brought herself up short. "Wait, you mean he really was kidnapped by monsters?"  
  
Grandma raised an eyebrow but continued on without answering. "Do you remember who rescued you?"  
  
And Cole did. He'd dreamed about it for years afterwards. A handsome man, with white-blonde hair and piercing blue eyes. He'd figured it was just one of those coming-of-age, get-a-clue type dreams, but he'd realized downstairs when the monster had melted back into its human face – it was the same man.  
  
"I don't understand," he said.  
  
Grandma Dawn smiled. "Let me tell you a story about my sister and the monster who loved her."


	5. Revenge of the Gator Ghoul

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: The gruesome game of the gator ghoul (fluff)
> 
> Summary: When life gives you lemons… have sex with Spike.

**Revenge of the Gator Ghoul**

 

"You know when I said I wanted to take a break, see more of the world?"  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Wrestling an alligator in a Florida swamp is pretty much the opposite of what I had in mind."  
  
"Well, to be fair, love, it was a possessed, demonic alligator."  
  
"Even worse! See this? Yeah, this right here – that's demon goo. From a dead demon. A real gator would've just died. This one had to go and wreck the ensemble along with my vacation."  
  
"Oh, I don't know about _wrecked_ , exactly."  
  
"Don't look at me like that when I'm all oozy."  
  
"Oozy, hmm? Sounds uncomfortable, maybe I can help."  
  
"Spike-"  
  
"Let's start by getting you out of these clothes and then..."  
  
"Seriously?  _This_ is what turns you on? Oh my god don't answer that."  
  
" _You_  turn me on. Now come here."  
  
"Mmmmph."


	6. A Limerick in Two Parts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: A Creepy Tangle In the Bermuda Triangle (comedy)

 

There once was a vampire called Spike,  
Who should have just got on his bike,  
The Slayer did say,  
“Don’t come back this way.”  
But Spike was as dumb as you like.  
  
Spike said to the Slayer, “You’re fine,  
I would love it if you would be mine.”  
She said, “Vampire, no way!  
That’s a game I won’t play.”  
And all Spike could do then was pine.


	7. Effulgent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Scooby's Night With a Frozen Fright
> 
> Summary: You can't keep a good poet down.

**Effulgent**

 

The Scoobs tried to teach Spike to limerick,  
Though he thought it was more of a gim(mer)ick,  
He tried very hard,  
But was clearly no bard,  
And he ended up creating a long, winding poem of great beauty and majesty that had them all entranced, you might even say it was effulgent.

  


 

 


	8. Ereptile Dysfunction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: The Curse of Viking Lake (fluff)
> 
> Summary: Buffy and Spike as Vikings! A little S7 detour.
> 
> Notes: I don't know anything about Vikings. I haven't even watched the TV show. On the plus side, I had a genuine Swede to ask re translations, so there's that. Warnings for gore and inappropriate sexytime venues.

**Ereptile Dysfunction**

 

Vilhelm the Bloody stuck his sword in the carcass of his vanquished foe and looked over at the shield maiden, Dråparen.  
  
"Fangs for playing," she said, standing over the serpent's severed head with one hand on her hip and her sword slung over her shoulder. "But you got a bit rattled at the end there and it cost you an arm and a leg."  
  
She might just have been the most attractive woman Vilhelm had ever seen. His blood was singing from the slaughter and the urge to take her up against the lifeless body of the giant snake was immense. He strode over to her and swept her up in a searing kiss that he could barely force himself to bring to and end, even when the edge of her sword came down none too gently to the side of his neck.  
  
"You wanna go the way of Jörmungandr there?" Dråparen asked silkily.  
  
"Had a slightly different snake in mind," he admitted, panting with adrenaline and lust. Chancing his very life, not just that of his trouser snake, Vilhelm let his hands slide down to her hips and jerked her closer. Dråparen's eyes fluttered closed at the first hint of friction. She dropped her sword and shoved him roughly back against the giant, lifeless body, and proceeded to climb him like a tree.  
  
That was when the spell broke. The body of Jörmungandr disintegrated into an oily grey gloop, and Spike fell back with it, Buffy landing in a heap on top of him. They looked at each other for a moment before carefully disentangling.  
  
"Huh," Buffy said. “That was different.” He felt her looking at him, but couldn't bring himself to meet her eyes, and instead stared over her shoulder, trying to will his erection down. She nudged him. "But seriously, trouser snake? Tell me that was the Viking talking."  
  
"Look, Buffy, I'm sorry. You know I would never—"  
  
"Hey," she said gently, and he felt the touch of her hand on his cheek. "Look at me. I'm not mad."  
  
He did look at her, and in fact she looked more fondly exasperated than anything. He let her warmth fill him – as if he had a choice. Their eyes held and when she bent towards him he couldn't bring himself to turn away, and so he accepted her kiss with as much grace as he could, and tried to figure out what it meant. Buffy just smiled, and got to her feet.  
  
"Come on," she said, "Let's get a change of clothes and go get some pizza."  
  
She offered her hand to help him up, and he took it.


	9. Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: The Scarab Lives! (angst)

**Reunion**

 

"Hey, Buffy," Spike said, looking nervous and hangdog, and about as guilty as you'd expect. "Long time no see."  
  
"Hey, Spike," she said sweetly and belted him in the nose. "Thanks for letting me know you were alive."

 


	10. Better Than Reality TV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: The Ghouliest Show on Earth (angst)
> 
> Summary: Spike and Buffy shut the potentials in a haunted house (S7).

**Better Than Reality TV**

 

"This is better than reality TV," Spike commented as they closed the doors to the mansion behind them and ambled together through the unlit garden, accompanied by the distant sounds of potential slayers yelping in fright.  
  
"Coming from you, that's high praise," Buffy smirked. They reached the garden wall and Buffy hoisted herself up to sit on it while Spike leaned back and began the customary pat-down for his smokes.  
  
"Really, though, feel like we shoulda saved this one for Halloween," he said.  
  
"I thought Halloween was the night all good fiends of the underworld stayed in."  
  
"Well, yeah," Spike said, finally finding the cigarette packet and shaking one out. "But the one thing it doesn't apply to is ghosties."  
  
His point was punctuated nicely by a blood-curdling scream – male, so not one of the potentials – and the thunderous pounding of stompy girly feet.  
  
"Meh," Buffy said, "the rate we're going, we'll be lucky to make it to Easter."  
  
"That's the spirit, Slayer," Spike said, lighting up.  
  
Buffy shrugged, grinning ever so slightly. "Welcome to my life: the ghouliest show on earth."


	11. Ass(et) Management

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: There’s a Demon Shark in the Foggy Dark (comedy)
> 
> Summary: Slayer dominance displays – always a turn on. Set in S6 during Tabula Rasa.

**Ass(et) Management**

 

Not that Spike was looking to take the Damsel in Distress role off of Harris's hands any time soon, but he had to admit he had quite enjoyed the Slayer coming to his rescue just now, and not once, but twice! So she didn't want to talk about their kiss – no big surprise there – but with the Slayer, actions were always more important than words. She said she couldn't stand him but she'd never dusted him in all these years, trusted him with her family, the little bit. Kissed him. Like he was the air in her lungs. And now she was tripping him to the ground to avoid a staking, and shoving him out the way to take on his aggressors and, well, a lesser vamp might've felt like his manliness had been called into question, but the way Spike figured it, Buffy wasn't just protecting his ass but her assets.  
  
Teeth was still on the prowl for him somewhere out there, but Spike couldn't really bring himself to care, because Buffy had basically just declared her ownership of him to the demon set without batting an eyelash, and it had left him all warm and tingly. Teeth could bite him – Spike had a Slayer to stalk.

 


	12. Let's Play Pretend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Smart House (angst)
> 
> Summary: Grief has given them a new vocabulary (set in the summer between S5 and S6.)

**Let's Play Pretend**

 

Dawn kinda likes it when it's just her and the Bot alone in the house, because then she gets to pretend. The others get all concerned when she slips up in front of them and treats the Bot like she's real, but it's not like Dawn's confused somehow – she knows her sister is dead. It's not like she's ever going to be able to escape that fact. It's just nice, sometimes, to pretend for a while. And the Bot always has time for her.  
  
"Dawn!" she says brightly one afternoon. "I'm making sandwiches! Did you have a good nap?"  
  
"No," Dawn tells her, "I had a nightmare."  
  
"I'm sorry to hear that, Dawn. Would you like a sandwich?"  
  
That's another good thing about the Bot. You can talk to her about anything, and she'll never give you the poor-little-orphan look Dawn is getting sick of seeing.  
  
"Sure," she says, taking one from the top of the teetering stack. "Though I think it's time to stop that now."  
  
"Okay!" the Bot says brightly, putting down her knife mid-butter. "Shall I do something else instead? We're sisters!"  
  
"Let's watch a movie," Dawn says.  
  
"Oh, great! I love movies! I can braid your hair while you eat popcorn!"  
  
Dawn blinks rapidly a couple of times, the sandwich suddenly hard to swallow. "Yeah," she says roughly, "that'd be nice."  
  
She's drowsing with her head in the Bot's lap when Spike comes by. Given that it's still light outside he does his usual storming-the-castle routine, and the house fills with the smell of singed vampire.  
  
"Dawn?" he yells, stomping about. "You in here?"  
  
He stops dead when he sees them, and Dawn closes her eyes and waits for the lecture. Instead, he's silent a long time, and when he speaks again he sounds very close.  
  
"You all right, Niblet?" he asks softly.  
  
"No," she says. Spike is the only other one she can say that to.  
  
"You all right for now?"  
  
Funny how grief has given them a new vocabulary. They aren't all right. They'll never be all right. But right now, is she about as all right as she can be?  
  
A tear slips from her eye, wetting the Bot's pants beneath her cheek.  
  
"Yeah," she tells him. "All right for now."  
  
He stomps around a bit more, doing whatever it is he came here to do, but he leaves her in peace to watch her movie and get her hair petted, and it's only when he's gone that the Bot speaks up.  
  
"I don't think Spike likes me anymore," she says. "He doesn't look me in the eye. He has such pretty eyes."  
  
"I don't think you'd want him to," Dawn tells her. "I don't think you'd want to see what's in them, anymore."

 


	13. More Fun Than At First Appearances

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: The Scary Sky Skeleton (comedy)
> 
> Summary: Getting around the non-corporeal issue might be more fun than they originally thought.
> 
> Setting: AU A5 - Buffy has somehow found out that Spike is alive and comes to LA. They've reconciled, but Spike's still a ghost.

**More Fun Than At First Appearances**

 

"I guess there's been at least one good thing to come out of this incorporeal mumbo jumbo," Spike said. They were lying side by side on Buffy's bed, facing each other. Or, well, Buffy was lying on the bed. Spike was hovering in more or less the right position.  
  
"Yeah? What's that?" Buffy's smile was gentle and warm and all the things he'd always longed for her to look at him with, but he hated the tinge of sadness that muddied everything up.  
  
"We've never talked so much in our lives." Buffy snorted, and he smiled with her. "Love listening to you tell me what's going on in that crazy head of yours. Never get tired of it."  
  
"I just wish I could touch you," Buffy sighed. "I love talking to you, too, but this is all a little..." She bit her lip. "Frustrating."  
  
Spike grinned, waggling an eyebrow at her playfully. "Frustrating how? Somewhere special you wanted to touch, pet?"  
  
She went to shove him in the chest, and of course her hand went right through.  
  
"Urgh!" she moaned, flopping onto her back. "I can't hit you, I can't kiss you, I can't..." She sighed again. "Can't love you. Not the way I want to."  
  
"Well," Spike said thoughtfully, "maybe we could put all this talking to better use."  
  
Buffy looked at him, eyes already darkening with intent. "What did you have in mind?"  
  
Spike took a long, leisurely look up and down her body. "Take your clothes off and I'll tell you.”

 


	14. Nosferatu

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Haunted House Hang-Up (fluff)
> 
> Summary: Set during and after Checkpoint. Spike watches a classic movie with the Summers women.

 

**Nosferatu**

 

Spike found Dawn poking around the lower level of his crypt. She must have wandered off at some point during _Passions_ , and now Joyce had sent him on a reccy to reclaim the wayward brat. Wayward and very  _nosy_ brat.  
  
"You know," he said, getting up nice and close to enjoy her jumping out of her little girly socks, "some might consider it rude to go poking through another person's private stuff."  
  
"Geez, Spike," she said, only jumping about half the expected amount, and covering up for  _that_  with the patented Summers eye-roll. "Little warning? I was just trying to find the bathroom."  
  
"Right," he said, raising an eyebrow pointedly at the throwing dagger she'd just been fondling. "Bathroom. Ought to be careful there, Bite Sized, since you're standing in my shadow and all."  
  
"So what?"  
  
"People used to believe standing in a vampire's shadow gave him power over you. Could make you tell the truth about whatever little nasties you've been up to down here."  
  
"Pfft," Dawn said, and her sheer unconcernedness would have been another dent to the already battered ego if it weren't weirdly adorable. "People also used to believe that if you left a pumpkin lying around too long it'd turn into a vampire."  
  
Spike couldn't help it, he laughed. "That's true enough. People are generally pretty stupid. Say, you know what we should watch, if you're going to be hanging around for a while?"  
  
"Urgh, pleeeease don't say more  _Passions._ "  
  
"Nah, Clem recorded over my reruns. I think you and Mother Dearest need an introduction to Nosferatu."  
  
That piqued her interest. "I thought you hated Dracula."  
  
Spike grinned, leading the way back to the ladder. "I do. Which is why I love this film. What I hear, old Drac was so pissing angry about how they depicted him, he ate the producers and had all the negatives burned. The only copies left were pirated. It’s bloody brilliant, they gave him teeth like sodding Bugs Bunny. What a wanker."  
  
*  
  
"I don't know, Spike," Joyce said, once the plan had been explained. "I don't think I want Dawn watching anything too scary."  
  
"Well," Spike said solemnly, "I certainly see your point, Joyce – would hate to fill the little one's head with anything ghoulish. Thing is, this isn't one of your Sunnydale Big Bads. The vamp in question looks like a garden gnome that's been stunned with a shovel to the back of the head. About as scary as an episode of _Friends_."  
  
She didn't look convinced, but shrugged and made herself comfortable in Spike's easy chair. "I guess we can always turn it off if it gets too much."  
  
*  
  
Sometime later, Joyce said to no one in particular, "Well this isn't very accurate. Even I know vampires don't bite there."  
  
Spike, sitting on the ground with his back against the armrest, fighting over a bowl of popcorn with the niblet, said, "Too right, 'specially on a bloke. That's right where the Adam’s apple is. You'd get nothing but a mouth full of gristle."  
  
"...I suppose you would."  
  
*  
  
"Hey, look!" Dawn said excitedly when they got to the part where Knock was literally climbing the walls. "It's Xander!"  
  
"Xander eats bugs?" Joyce sounded more disturbed by that than anything else.  
  
"He did when Dracula was in town."  
  
Spike snorted. "Wanker."  
  
"Spike, language."  
  
"Oh, right, sorry."  
  
*  
  
Buffy came back some time toward the end of Act IV. Spike glanced up at her to see if she was going to break up the party early, but she just stared blankly at the TV screen for a few seconds before shaking her head and sinking down almost absent mindedly to sit beside him.  
  
"How'd it go?" he ventured to ask, pitching his voice low to keep the ladies out of it, since she always seemed to want to do that.  
  
"I really don't want to talk about it," Buffy said, equally quietly.  
  
"But you are going to tell me, right?" He wondered if he was going to have to point out that he couldn't help her if he was flying blind. He loved the chit but she could be a bit stupid about that stuff sometimes.  
  
"You know what they say about misery loving company, and if there's anyone I don't mind seeing miserable..."  
  
"Well thanks, Slayer, I'm touched."  
  
"What're we watching, anyway?"  
  
"Nosferatu."  
  
"I thought you hated—wait, are those his  _teeth_?!"

 


End file.
